Book Pages

Remember that famous movie, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid"? Remember singing along and later humming "Raindrops keep falling on my head"? Well, a book I just finished brought me back to that movie, and song, which kept playing as background music to the book as I read. It is Etta, by Gerald Kolpan. Mr. Kolpan weaves the story behind the woman behind the romantic history of Harry Longbaugh, a.k.a. the Sundance Kid. I always wondered about her, what caused her to take up with a criminal, even if he did resemble Robert Redford. As did Mr. Kolpan, fleshing out a marvelous story of a young woman, daughter of a financier in Philadelphia, a debutante who becomes a girl on the run from the Black Hand, killer of her father. Etta is transfigured into a Harvey Girl, moving to Colorado to work in one of their restaurants. There she kills a man who tries to savagely beat and rape her, and finds herself at the Hole in the Wall for refuge. She falls in love with Sundance, and they begin a series of sophisticated robberies, alongside Butch Cassidy. At one point Etta has to travel back East, where she meets a young Eleanor Roosevelt, and they become fast friends. This is a great "what-if" tale, bringing history alive, and the author has done a great job of convincing the reader that anything in the days of Buffalo Bill and his Wild West Show is more than entertainment--it's the real deal!